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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VII. Social Inequality - 28. The Basis of Social Inequality - 4. The Jim Crow Laws
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580 An American Dilemma
tion to be inconsequential,^® are likely to underrate these eflFects. Southern
Negroes tell quite a different story. From their own experiences in dif-
ferent parts of the South they have told me how the Jim Crow statutes
were effective means of tightening and freezing—in many cases of insti-
gating—segregation and discrimination. They have given a picture of how
the Negroes were pushed out from voting and ofEceholding by means of
the disfranchisement legislation which swept like a tide over the Southern
states during the period from 1875 to 1910.“ In so far as it concerns the
decline in political, civic, and social status of the Negro people in the
Southern states, the Restoration of white supremacy in the late ^seventies
—
according to these informants—was not a final and consummated revo-
lution but the beginning of a protracted process which lasted until nearly
the First World War. During this process the white pressure continuously
increased^ and the Negroes were continuously pushed backward. Some older
white informants have related much the same story.
Before the Jim Crow legislation there is also said to have been a tendency
on the part of white people to treat Negroes somewhat differently depend-
ing upon their class and education. This tendency was broken by the laws
which applied to all Negroes. The legislation thus solidified the caste line
and minimized the importance of class differences in the Negro group.
This particular effect was probably the more crucial in the formation of the
present caste system, since class differentiation within the Negro group con-
tinued and, in fact, gained momentum.** As we shall find, a tendency is
discernible again, in recent decades, to apply the segregation rules with some
discretion to Negroes of different class status. If a similar trend was well
under way before the Jim Crow laws, those laws must have postponed this
particular social process for one or two generations.^
While the federal Civil Rights Bill of 1875 was declared unconstitu-
tional, the Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution—which pro-
vided that the Negroes are to enjoy full citizenship in the United States,
that they are entitled to ‘‘equal benefit of all laws,” and that “no state shall
‘
vSec Chapter 20.
Sec Chapter 32.
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